So there I was, smoking and thinking. I wanted to come up with a way to pheno hunt a large quantity of the fem seeds I just made to try and find a keeper. I could do several runs with a few plants and spend my entire life seed hunting or I could build something to do it for me. I ended up settling on the idea of a solo cup style grow straight to 12/12, but I wanted to do it better. In solo cup grows the plants can't express their true potential because the small containers limit their ability to uptake water and nutrients. They also get root bound rather quick.
I decided to build a 24 site system that would let each plant shine. So I got 2 totes and cut 12 4" holes in each lid. Each hole gets a net pot. Each net pot gets a 3x3 rockwool cube. Each cube is attached to a drip emitter set on a repeating timer that waters it 1 minute every hour. This is a cross between dwc and flood and drain. The roots can grow down into the water and the constant watering creates tons of ripples on the surface every hour to oxygenate the water. No air stones, no chiller (shoutout to Orca), just a 30w pump that runs 1 minute every hour.
The system has an inline filter before the drippers to prevent clogging of the drippers. I hook up a 1/2" hose every 2 weeks and pump the old res water to my banana trees, which are bigger than my house now. To fill the system I just mix my nutrients and use that same hose to cyphin the water into the system. Takes about 5 minutes to empty and refill.
Chris sent me some Chill Out OG seeds for helping answer questions on the forum (hope he isn't sick of me yet) and I am running 2 of those as well to try and find a female (not ideal but it was the space i had). I will cut clones off of them when they get big enough. Didn't want to waste time growing out males so I will reveg the females when they are large enough if I am so lucky. My original plan was to run 3 of them this round but only ended up with 2 due to time constraints. I will run the remainder of the seeds he sent me next run. Can't express my gratitude enough Chris. Thank you so much! Probably a small thing to you but it meant a great deal to me.
For anyone following my other grow, it's fine. Sorry I missed the post last week. Life doesn't wait for anyone. I will post an update tonight. Anyway, here are the pictures. The Chill Out OG started later than my other seeds so they are smaller due to that. For anyone interested, they are the 2 seedlings on the right closest to me in the pictures.
I was out of coco plugs so I used loose soil when sprouting the seeds (do not reccomend). They were pissed when I moved them to the rockwool. They have all pretty much recovered at this point though and are just starting to take off. No signs they noticed the lights are on 12/12 yet. I will try to post an update next week. Thanks for checking out my system and thanks again to Chris!
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Sorry to anyone following. I got pretty busy with life. The 3 plants I kept from my cross have been dried and pressed into rosin. The Chill Out OG I have been growing out is finally ready for flush for a few days before it too comes down. The buds on this plant are uniformly dense and smells uniquely of apricot and bubblegum. It's not quite the lemon/lime earthy smell I was expecting but I'm quite satisfied with it. I will be featuring a clone of this in an upcoming grow in my larger and more cared for rdwc setup for anyone who wants to see how it performs. I will be popping some more of the seeds to try and find a plant more true to what he wanted to express soon.
Weeded out the ones that didn't make the cut. Bu-dum-tss. Booooooo, go home loser.
The one I'm breeding with from this run.
The Chill Out OG finally getting the light it wants. Starting to take off. Appears to be around end of week 2 or week 3 of flower. The light schedule really delayed it's progression to full flower. It looks very healthy though.
The others can finish but I am not interested in preserving them.
That is so cool. I was thinking of using PVC piping to make something similar.
Bit of bad news. Many of the plants ended up reverting to veg to some degree. I am most likely going to kill them all except the one I am using as my keeper from that run. I prefer one pheno in particular over the 2 that I took cuts from so i killed the other 2 clones.
Still no roots on any of them but I don't suspect it won't be much longer since I saw the pre-root formations on the clones I killed. All the clones still look good and are just now starting to develop nitrogen deficiency, which is generally a signal they are about to produce roots in my experience. I now have 2 strawberry candy non-keeper clones, 2 keeper clones, 2 new pheno run clones, 3 Chill Out OG clones, and 1 new seed. Current plan is to mix up some sts spray once my keeper clones root. Hit the keeper with the spray for about a week and send it and the other clones except the Chill Out OG into flower for a mix of different fem seeds.
Going to make strawberry candy non-keeperxkeeper, keeperxkeeper, and new phenoxkeeper. I will take the 2 best Chill Out OG clones and use them in my big tent setup for my next personal stash run and kill the weakling *evil laugh*.
I have found a couple issues with my setup in this run and will need to address them before next run. 1st thing I need to do is take them off the repeating timer. They are getting too much water and not enough oxygen. I could add an airstone to each res but I don't want to. Instead I will use a normal plug timer and set the pump to run once a day at first and assess if more is necessary as the plants become larger. I assume it will be. The other issue is my timer. I need to make sure it can't switch like it did this time. Luckily this didn't happen earlier in the run or I would not have had any idea of structure or smell. I feel that I got what I needed from this run and will honestly be happy to kill the plants I don't want because I already have far more than I can use from my big tent that just finished.
I will be keeping the 1 Chill Out OG and my keeper. Neither plant seemed to care about the light change strangely enough. On another note there were no hermies which makes me feel very good about the sexual stability of my seeds.
Nutrient burn is caused by lack of oxygen in the res water for anyone curious. Goodbye to most of you girls! Sorry for your luck. Your genetic makeup displeased me.
Had a bit of a mishap this week. The timer switch got turned off and my lights ran 24/7 for roughly a week I'm guessing. The extra light caused a couple issue but I'm ok with it because it gives me a good stress test for the sexual stability of the seeds. This bud was never really for my stash so idc about any lost potential. I have already made my selection for continuing this genetic. I have plants that I tool cuttings off of and 3 Chill Out OG clones as well.
Additionally, I cleaned up the lower canopy to improve air movement in the space. This too adds to the stress load of the plants. It will be interesting to record the responses in each plant. For anyone wondering how I personally deal with lighting issue; I will cut the light cycle early and initiate 12/12 immediatly to keep plant hormones normal. In this extreme situation I decided 24 hours of darkness would be my best shot at getting the plants back to normal without adding additional stress. It has been several days since correction and I see potential signs of reveg in some plants but it could also just be genetic variation. After this run is complete I will cross my keeper of the Strawberry Candy with another pheno of the same strain I like. I will also cross both phenos I took cuts from with my keeper. I will grow out 12 of the Strawberry candyxstrawberry candy and 6 of each wedding cakexstrawberry candy in my next cycle.
ended up using rockwool plugs for clones because I had the on hand. Also running 1 new fem seed called White Afghani from JollyPondFarms in Richmond Va.
So I have my eyes on 2 or 3 plants at the moment based on terpenes, trichomes, and structure. Going to take cuts from them in a few days.
The Chill Out OG is I. The last picture. It's 2 weeks behind the other plants and it hasn't really kicked I to flower yet. I have 2 cuts I can get off of it and will be taking cuts from that as well.
Cool stuff!
Is there a trick to taking a cutting while in flower? Do you do anything different with the clone?
I took cuttings from a plant in week 4 of flower once and used a rooting hormone on them. All but one died, the one that lived did reveg but looked more like a tumble weed than a cannabis plant. However the cuttings from the tumbleweed plant turned out perfectly fine.
Week 4 12/12. Will probably do a water change this week. Trichomes started coming in this week. I have my eye on a couple still just based on structure alone. Time will tell if any get to stick around.
The Chill Out OG is only about 2 weeks old. Hoping it stretches a bit because I'd like to get a couple cuts off of it. My keeper pheno was from a cut 7 weeks into flower so I'm not worried about the reveg. 100% confirmed female though.
Week 3 of 12/12. Most plants showed sex last week but some started this week. Oddly enough, I think the ones that were more stressed from the transplant flowered faster, which limited their size. I had assumed the opposite, but I suppose they are just like autos in that aspect.
I have my eye on a couple of these seeds based on structure but I will need to find the correct terpene I'm looking for as well. It's a slight skunky/diesel smell that make my brain go nuts lol (weird terpene for these strains). Once I have the plant with the structure I want I am going to cross it back to my keeper pheno of the Strawberry Candy and see what I end up with. My keeper pheno grows enormous buds but with a more berry-centric terp. I will be searching the seeds of that last cross for my new keeper.
*Taps plays in background*
The first Chill Out OG was male. I cut it down and am actually running a bit of an experiment in its place. I topped the far back left plant and placed the cut directly in the rockwool. Going to see what happens. The second one isn't showing sex yet but I have a gut feeling it's female.
I do 50 sites in a 5x10 under 2 Spectrum x/y. I use jacks 321 with tap water and irrigate with micro drippers (transitioning from FloraFlex to Netafim). I use coco cubes from coco depot that are the size of rockwool cubes. Very similar setup so Id say you are headed down the right path!
Cool setup! Good luck on the hunt. Too bad about the male.
I guess this is above my grade. Happy growing!
Got a bit of darwinism over in the pheno tent. I won't make any special attempt to help the plants that can't keep up. They will inevitably get choked out. I will not kill them though.
Unfortunatly, I think the first Chill Out OG is a dude.
Funny enough, I have a clone of my keeper in there and it hasn't grown at all. I failed to think about the fact that it already had been in flower so when I flipped the lights it started 100% flower immediatly. It has pretty much just been sick looking the entire time and represents a plant 2 weeks into flower with its pistil formation. Signs of sex are just now showing on the other seedlings. They are all female since the seeds were feminized using STS.
Chill Out OG appears to be male. About 99% sure. Will give it another week to confirm.
😶🌫️that’s what’s up!! Go head CAM Z!!